Posts tagged child
“Rabbit Hole” Movie as Therapy
Feb 15th
“Movie as Therapy”
RABBIT HOLE stars Nicole Kidman and Aaron Eckhart as Becca and Howie Corbett, whose four-year-old son Danny was killed eight months before the movie starts, and so you know it’s not a comedy.
The adaptation from the play of the same name, which won a Pulitzer Prize, is very good, but unfortunately the movie is not.
In fact, you could sum up the story with a simple “Woman loses son offscreen, woman loses husband on-screen, woman gets husband back, they heal.”
Roll credits.
Of course, both Kidman and Eckhart are good in their roles, and Kidman received an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress for this movie, but just as you have heard of a “one-trick pony,” this is a one-note movie.
The title comes from the title of a comic book created by one of the characters in the story, which deals with parallel universes, and Becca tells him that she likes that idea, because then the one we are in might be “just the sad version of us” and that “somewhere out there, I’m having a good time.”
See? Definitely not the feel-good movie of the year.
Becca lies to a neighbor who invites her and Howie over for dinner, saying they already have plans, when they don’t.
She and Howie haven’t talked at all about having another child, and they haven’t even had sex since Danny died.
She drops out of the group therapy sessions for couples who have lost a child that she and Howie have been attending when the discussions include too much God talk for her taste, especially when one grieving mother says that she takes comfort in believing that her child died because God wanted another angel.
And she starts lying to Howie when she befriends the teenage boy who was responsible for Danny’s death.
On the other hand, Howie is not entirely blameless, either, when the growing distance between Becca and him causes him to consider other ways to heal his grief, without telling Becca.
Becca’s grief causes her to lash out at her mother, played by Diane Wiest, and even her sister, who is planning to get married, but then the subplots feel more like failed attempts to add a couple extra notes to this one-note movie more than anything else.
RABBIT HOLE is pretty much movie as therapy.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”
“Due Date” See It
Nov 10th
“See It”
DUE DATE could be dismissed as just another “odd couple, “buddy,” “road-trip” movie, but it is much more than that.
It is a very funny, often laugh-out-loud movie about two men forced to travel across the southern United States in order to meet separate deadlines, but I have a feeling that men will enjoy it much more than women will.
However, everyone can enjoy the talent of the two actors who play those two men: Robert Downey Jr. and Zach Galifianakas, who portray Peter and Ethan, respectively.
Peter is an architect, Ethan is an actor wannabe, and the story begins in Atlanta, where they have an unfortunate, but funny encounter at the airport departure curb.
Then they have another funny, but unfortunate encounter before takeoff on the same airplane to Los Angeles, and it just keeps getting better as it goes on.
Peter and Ethan end up in a rental car and in a hurry to get to California, because Peter’s wife is about to have their first child and Ethan has a scheduled meeting with an agent.
Peter doesn’t want to share the road trip with Ethan, but is forced to, because as Ethan tells him, “I have all the money, the car, and the winning personality.”
Peter and the audience will agree on two of those reasons.
However, Ethan also has a dog traveling with him; glaucoma, which causes a side trip to buy some medical marijuana; and the ashes from his recently deceased father, which he carries in a coffee can.
Unfortunately, Ethan spends almost all his money on the weed, and now they are left with only $60 between them, and they have reached only Birmingham, Alabama.
There is a very funny scene in which they try to get some money wired to them from Peter’s wife; an even funnier scene in Dallas where they stop for help from Darryl, an old friend of Peter’s played by Jamie Foxx; and a scene that tops them all when they accidentally try to cross the border into Mexico, which ends fantastically hilarious.
When they reach the Grand Canyon, where they stop to satisfy Ethan’s wishes, they swap confessions in a touching scene until Ethan reveals the biggest confession of them all, and then we have one final mad dash to meet their . . .
DUE DATE. See it.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”